For anti-Christian snarksters, there's absolutely nothing good that can be said about Christianity, so they encourage a blanket dismissal of centuries of Christian thought, literature, art, culture, and science.

New atheism is far from dead because it is a term to simply describe vocal atheists who came out of the closet after 9/11 and attacked religion around the world like it had not seen in the past, but it also is not a term one needs to simply identify with.

Mind-body dualism, or the belief, roughly speaking, that we are a combination of body and soul, is not exactly coming back into respectability in leading philosophical circles, but it does show signs of tiptoeing back into the conversation.

In science, problems get solved faster when the pot begins to boil. Dormant questions need motivation, which is why I posed a million-dollar challenge to anyone in the materialist camp who could demonstrate how matter turns into mind.

When there is a well-defined, unambiguous hypothesis to test, an experiment can be very simple: find a clear counterexample. In the case of a theory of humor, find something that is funny but is not predicted to be funny by the hypothesis, or something the hypothesis says should be funny that isn't.

If our programs can identify jokes reliably, our algorithms might be doing it in the same way that humans do. Luckily, though, we're still far from computers that appreciate humor, rather than just detecting it.

How does innately liking sweetness translate into thinking about and seeking out the dessert menu, when there is no ongoing experience of sweetness right there on our tongues to inform us of our enjoyment?

What's chic, what's in and what's out, should be predicted by evolutionary theory. Otherwise it will be judged by history as just a passing phase. Eventually as outmoded as shoulder pads from the 1980s.

While it may not be true that those without a faith need one, it is demonstrably true that people of faith must have questions and doubts. Otherwise their faith becomes a static, lifeless, self-serving doctrine.